Services Sourcing

April 11th, 2008 at 09:07am Oscar Pacheco - Iasta

Companies spend an enormous amount of money on buying services, including temporary labor, consulting, cleaning, relocation, accounting, security, legal, financial, and on and on.  Usually these services are not “direct” cost items and have not traditionally been managed by the purchasing organization. 

That has been changing, according to a purchasing.com article, How+Why you should be buying Services.

There are many valid reasons to include services as part of the spend that is managed by purchasing, including of course saving, but that is often not the paramount reason.  The article discusses numerous good ones such as reduction in number of vendors, spend consolidation, standardization of services, and cost avoidance. 

What is most interesting is that the process of tackling services spend is similar to direct spend, but the approach to sourcing needs to be different.  Aspects such as quality, requirements, and quantities are not easy to determine, and are often based on stakeholders opinions rather than hard facts.  This may make these areas harder to source but it is worth the effort.  Develop a process, use the sourcing tools available and go after services spend.

Entry Filed under: General, Supply Management Best Practices, e-Sourcing Marketplace

 Digg It!  |   Save to del.icio.us